All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has done his bit to calm nerves at home as millions of nervous New Zealanders await the outcome of their World Cup quarter-final against France.
The 2007 meltdown against France is still raw in the memory of the rugby-obsessed nation praying there is no repeat in Saturday’s quarter-final rematch, again at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium.
The mood has not been helped by the All Blacks stuttering during pool matches eight years on.
They won all four games, but handling errors and a misfiring scrum raised alarm bells in New Zealand, sending Hansen into emotion dilution mode.
“I can understand there is a bit of concern back home, because they are at home and not here,” he said.
“They don’t know everything we’ve been doing, and they will be a little bit apprehensive about a few things because they don’t have any control over it.”
Hansen has maintained throughout the tournament that one lesson he took from 2007 was that the All Blacks were underprepared for the knockout matches and that is what he has tried to avoid in England.
“Without being disrespectful to the pool round, it’s not the same edge when you are playing Namibia. Because you know you are going to win. You have to create it some other way and we have tried to do that through our training.”
There have been moments of brilliance but no evidence of fancy moves, such as Richie McCaw’s stroll through the lineout to score the match-winning try when the All Blacks beat South Africa 27-20 three months ago.
Kieran Read said then the All Blacks had a few moves up their sleeve for “when we need them … later in the year.”
If anything, the All Blacks are braced for surprises coming from the French with assistant coach Ian Foster saying they were taking no notice of reports about dissention in the ranks of les Bleus.
“We’re expecting the French team to be very very fired up to be at Cardiff. It’s obviously a goal of theirs. They have shown before they can rise to the big occasion and we expect the best of them.”
In both the 2007 quarter-final, New Zealand’s worst World Cup performance, and in the 1999 semi-final defeat, France came from behind to win.
It was the “French flair” and their penchant for doing the unexpected that ultimately sank the All Blacks.
It was why one selection in particular for France caught the All Blacks attention and that was replacing the bruising centre Mathieu Bastareaud with the more elusive Alexandre Dumoulin.
Veteran New Zealand centre Conrad Smith confirmed Friday attention had been paid to video of Dumoulin and his midfield partner Wesley Fofana who will be working off vastly experienced halves Morgan Parra and Frederic Michalak.